Understanding The Basics of Effective Email Marketing

The email offer whets the customer’s appetite enough to where they will click through to your sales page to get more complete information. On the sales page you can be as verbose as you want without being overly repetitive. The sales page must offer the complete information including the price, incentive, guarantee, warranty, etc.

Let’s look at four crucial strategies to turn up your email heat.

1.Handling Unsubscribes

Unsubscribes aren’t a bad thing at all; It means your subscribers are prequalifying themselves so that what you’re left with are the more highly responsive members more likely to buy. You won’t be wasting your time with what car salesmen call “tire kickers” – those who make noises like they’re going to buy, demand concessions, ask endless questions… but never, ever close the deal.

However, if you’re getting more unsubscribes than sales, it may be a tipoff that you don’t know your subscribers as well as you should… or that you’ve been taking facts for granted that actually don’t apply.

Let’s run a quick checklist on the basics… Have you recently surveyed your target market to find out:

1. What they need
2. What they’re missing
3. What they associate you with
4. If they remember who you are
5. If they read your emails – and why
6. If they don’t read your emails – and why
7. What they wish you’d provide
8. Whether or not they’d be interested in helping you serve them by answering a more focused survey

2. Hot Response Survey

When you survey your readers, try to do it through an email first and see what response you actually do get.

Then write a short post about your survey on your blog, with links. (You can host it on a free survey creation site such as SurveyMonkey.) Drive people to it through your social networks and forums you belong to, for additional input.

To take it up a notch, use one of the Facebook poll apps and repeat your poll on Facebook.

There are a few key points to remember in order to make this an exercise that connects you with your readers, rather than annoying them or leaving them indifferent:

1. Keep the focus on your subscriber – with every single word. This survey isn’t about “how you, the subscriber, can help me, me, me”; it’s all about “what can I do to make your life easier? I’m really listening to you!”

2. Don’t ask more than 10 questions in this first survey, absolute maximum. (5 are best.)

3. Make it as easy as possible for your subscriber or respondent to answer. (By all means include an opt-in box, if you’re sending this to the general public — but make it optional.)
And, to cement that strong connection you want, this last, upcoming point is the most important one of all…

4. Send them a “thank you” email (if they’re a member of your list or have provided a contact email)… containing an unannounced, high-value bonus.This doesn’t have to be a 50-page eBook or complete set of CD’s – it can be as simple as:

• A handy template
• A useful checklist
• A list of 10 invaluable resource links not commonly knownResist the temptation to invite people to sign up in order to get your unannounced bonus – keep it as a genuine “thank you” surprise for those who are genuinely interested, and you’ll gain a much tighter group of pre-qualified, loyal, potential buyers… who will certainly not forget your name in a hurry!

3. Splitting Your List

If your subscriber base is approaching or past four digits, consider creating more than one list. The more subscribers you gain, you’re more likely to pick up ones interested in slightly different areas of your services or products. Splitting your lists into more tightly-focused ones allows you to:

It’s worth noting one other quirk of human behaviour; people who decide not to open two or three of your emails are creating a habit – the habit of ignoring your emails!

And all it takes is the memory of one annoying or boring email, before they start doing this. Putting them on a more focused list can help decrease or eliminate that potential “gap”.

Use Joint Venture Partners

Approach a super-affiliate (not necessarily yours, yet). Offer them a higher-than-normal conversion rate in exchange for reviewing and promoting your product. Make it easy for them by providing them with their own already-set-up affiliate resources and a personal direct download page, so they can pick up and review your product at their own pace.

Often, if you show you know what you’re doing and make it easy to at least check out your product (attracted by that flattering, especially high conversion payout) the super-affiliate will capture you many more leads and sales by sending out their own power-packing emails, while you’re busy working on your next set of auto responder messages.

And of course you’re doing everything else you can to boost your visibility, credibility and response rates, including:

PPL (pay per lead) or PPC (pay per click) advertising campaigns based around a single, long-tailed keyword

Low-cost e-zine advertising – if you choose the right e-zine, this can be a particularly powerful tool, making use of someone else’s list

Social networking buzz creation (Facebook, Twitter)

Social bookmarking (StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Delicious)

YouTube video creation – this can be another great buzz-maker.

SEO (it still counts!)

Forum Special Offers

Article Marketing

Press ReleasesSo what’s the major reason you’re doing all this, instead of relying solely on your emails (however hot you can mix the sauce)? It’s simple. Have you ever received an email in your inbox from someone who’s acting like they know you… usually saying something along the lines of:

“Tara, It’s Your Turn to Grab my System!” from Joe Q. Weeble.

You stare at the email, look at the name of the sender and mutter: “Who in tarnation is Joe Q. Weeble?” Then you hit delete, half-convinced it must be spam, because you’d remember a guy with a name like that if you’d signed up for his list… and you don’t remember him.

You see, you can target your emails as perfectly as pie… but if you don’t have the social proof and relationship behind you – if your subscribers don’t remember your name, or (worse) get you mixed up with that other guy who “shouts” in caps all the time and tries to sell outdated resale material… your hot response emails are never going to be read.

It’s not enough to streamline your targeting. Make sure you also streamline and coordinate your promotion too. That’s the single, most crucial piece of the email streamlining puzzle that people often overlook.